Category Archives: 3. News You Can Use

Creating Slides that Keep Audiences Riveted

A long time ago (well, the early 2000s) in a galaxy far, far away (well, in Cupertino, California) the co-founder of Apple came up with a ground-breaking idea for presentations. Renowned for his brilliant keynote addresses, Steve Jobs needed to capture audiences, and he instinctively knew that filling a slide with words was not the way to do it.

Jobs knew that audiences—even ones like his, who were eager to learn about Apple’s new products—had short attention spans and that showing word-heavy, cluttered slides would turn his rapt listeners into glassy-eyed sleepwalkers.

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Even Harvard Says It’s Giving Too Many A’s

© Dylan Goodman, Harvard University

A recent internal report at Harvard revealed that the university was handing out too many A’s, thus “failing to perform the key functions of grading” and “damaging the academic culture” of the institution. Students were not amused.

From their perspective, they were admitted to the school specifically because they had received A’s, and they claim they already study a lot, sleep very little, and face undue stress to achieve.

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AI Delusions Are Getting Loopier

Robot on a laptop screen

ChatGPT has taken a turn for the weird—beyond even inaccuracies, the so-called hallucinations. Verified online conversations with the bot confirm that the AI told one user it communicated with aliens. To another it predicted a financial apocalypse on a specific date. ChatGPT even assured one naïve soul he could bend time. These responses are just a partial list of the nonsense ChatGPT has spewed to its users. The problem is that some people, particularly from vulnerable populations, believe the false statements.

The incidents often take place during long conversations with the bot and have physicians and victims’ advocates worried enough to label the phenomenon AI psychosis or AI delusion. This is a condition that when, due to conversations with AI, users believe they have superpowers such as having discovered a new mathematical concept or scientific advance or that they are supernatural beings.

Chatbots are engineered to compliment and agree with users. However, when vulnerable individuals are involved, such conversations can affirm their delusions in a back-and-forth feedback loop that draws them deeper into their delusional beliefs.

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